An Encyclopedia of 150 Years at UMass

A-Z guide: Genes, Hoops, Grammys, and more

Founded in 1863, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The Boston Globe has published a special magazine recognizing 150 valuable contributions UMass has made in the worlds of education, innovation, athletics, health care, the arts, and more.

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UMass Amherst has the most graduate and undergraduate students out of all the five University of Massachusetts locations. In the fall of 2012, 28,236 students attended the Amherst location, almost the size of a small city. Check out the enrollment break down in this graphic.

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UMass may not be the school you attended a few decades ago or even a few years ago. Its become so surprisingly selective that the alumni magazine ran a story recently titled Could You Still Get In? The answer may be no, says Kevin Kelly, the director of admissions.

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The Chelsea native-turned-Texas-oilman gave his alma mater $6 million in 1996  the largest donation in the schools history at the time  and UMass repaid the favor by affixing his name to its school of management.

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Today, the big kitchen buzzwords are fresh and local, but a hundred years ago, the action was in preservation: finding ways to make fruits and vegetables last longer. The department of horticulture established in the early 20th century claims a role in the development of federal food standards.

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Price is one of the reasons applications to UMass Amherst are up nearly 70 percent since 2005. Tuition, room, and board at BU costs $56,184; at Northeastern, $53,226. The same prices added up to a comparatively cheap $23,167 at UMass Amherst.

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QTV may or may not have been the first fraternity at UMass, but it definitely wasnt Greek. Founded in 1869, the local frat was Latin. It won a prize in the 1963 Homecoming Parade. And then. . . who knows?

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UMasss expansion is why today its five campuses dwarf its competition around the state in current students, a record 70,874 total, and alumni, 259,000 in-state UMass alums, double the number of Boston University. And each campus has carved out its own niche.

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When it comes to climate change, University of Massachusetts researchers are always looking forward, but theyre also looking back. Way back. We have some people looking at warming that happened 30 million years ago, says Michael Rawlins, an associate profess of geosciences.

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Professor of English and Judaic studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and director of the universitys Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, Young is a scholar of memorials to tragedies whose work is as influential as it is low-profile.

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Its hard to imagine a UMass graduate who has caused more people to curse, throw things, or break a pencil in frustration than Geoffrey Cornish. And even after his death at age 97 in 2012, he will continue to torment people  not everyone mind you. Just golfers.

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As long as Massachusetts is home to the likes of Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, Emerson, Northeastern, Brandeis, Amherst College, Williams, and so many others, UMass Amherst may always stay in the shadow of private schools.

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UMass Amherst has a stronger reputation abroad in many fields than it might at home. Some 1,800 international students from 100 countries go there to study, almost all of them at the graduate level, where they make up about half of the annual applicants and 30 percent of the enrollment.